Stephen R. Covey's «The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People» isn't a quick read. It doesn't want to be either. For Covey, success is based on habitual formation of the character - comparable to the cycle of sowing and harvesting and about as time-consuming.
In this eight-part series, I'm going to present the key concepts of the book and what I've learned from them. This is Part 4 of the series.
[Note: If you happen to be a follower of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD), the chapter discussed in this posting provides some interesting ideas on weekly reviews and on how to prioritize your next steps.]
An overview of the series can be found here.
Efficient management
It is easier to learn management than to learn leadership. Leadership is about developing an inner compass, whereas management is about going into the direction suggested by that compass. Leadership is about being effective (knowing and reaching your goals, at all), management is about reaching your goals as efficiently as possible. Covey uses the ladder analogy: leadership must determine against which wall to lean a ladder; management is then about climbing up as efficiently as possible. Putting first things first is about good management, then: climb the ladder as fast as you can and don't let any trivia, friction or resignation stop you. You've defined already what is important using the habit Begin with the End in Mind.
Eisenhower matrix, Covey variantYou don't question your principles minute by minute, even if you fall short of obeying them, sometimes. To explain this, Covey describes our everyday Catch-22 situations by the Eisenhower matrix: depending on whether something is important (or not) and urgent (or not), it falls into one of four categories, or quadrants. If your life revolves mostly around quadrant 1 situations, you're much too busy fighting crises to have some time left for foresighted planning - a vicious cycle. People wasting their time in quadrants 3 and 4 may impress others by looking awfully busy, but actually they've drifted away from their principles because they chose inappropriate centers of their lives. The key to success is to spend as much time as possible in quadrant 2.
How do you cope with a bunch of pressing situations? How can you free some time every day for quadrant 2? Covey recommends that you employ a couple of strategies:
- Saying no. However, this will only work if you have a «burning yes» inside, besides that «No». Most people feel quite uncomfortable when they decline wishes or requests made by others; you can avoid bad feelings only if you've established you priorities. Plus, you need to spend your time on realizing them, of course.
- Balancing roles instead of managing time. As long as you're driven by calendar entries only, there is hardly a chance that your results and relationships will improve continuously. Rather, Covey suggests that you consider all of the roles you're playing in your life (and those you'd like to play): father, daughter, employee, club chairman… Once you've written them down, start thinking about goals that follow from these roles. You're less likely to forget something important as soon as you start looking at your life from the perspectives of various roles. Bonus: if you need to make compromises, no part of your life will be overlooked..
- Weekly planning. By deriving two goals per role per week and by scheduling them for the week ahead you'll have about the right amount of spare time to stay flexible. One week is long enough to realize plans and short enough to allow for quick reallocations of time slots. That's why all Franklin-Covey paper planners you can buy are centered around a view of a week.
- Managing people efficiently is a bad idea. Covey tells the story of one of his sons who wanted to break up with the girl he had been dating for a while. So he scheduled a 10 to 15 minutes phone call to tell her. As you may guess, this didn't work that well. Covey recommends to override your schedules under such circumstances. In short: relationships first.
- Paying attention to being coherent. Only by considering your principles, roles and goals carefully and by writing them down you're in a good position to maintain a coherent self and to behave with integrity. If you haven't thought about your principles or if you're not reviewing them habitually, you're starting to drift - or worse, to be driven by others. Actually, Covey is talking about discipline here: you've got to be your own disciple and do what you found to be right.
- Maintaining a portable system. Whatever tools you use for planning purposes, you should carry them with you all the time. On the bus as well. For reading as well as for writing.
Learning to delegate
You don't need to do everything on your own, but remember there is a good way and a bad way of delegating:
- Gofer delegation is a special kind of micro management. Every movement is regulated and will be monitored. Different is synonymous to worse, the only road to success is becoming a slave to a method. Don't dare modifying it - after all, your boss designed it! It's no surprise gofers «never get anything right» and «make» bosses wish they had never «delegated».
- Stewardship delegation on the other hand is focused on results, not on methods. There must be an upfront explanation of which results are expected, what are the guidelines, what resources will be available. Everybody involved knows about her personal accountability and about positive or negative consequences, depending on the outcome.
My impression
I like Covey's tool box of roles a lot. That's because I'm getting older and don't want to store everything in my head only. Opposed to a calendar-centric approach, roles are a huge step forward even if they're not as revolutionary as David Allen's concept of contexts. On the other hand, Allen lacks the perspective on the roles we're playing in our lives - maybe his metaphor of flight altitude for thinking comes close (50,000 feet to runway) which seems to be the base for his natural planning model (starting from the purpose of a project and leading down to the very first next step). Also, roles are very helpful for weekly reviews in the Getting Things Done (GTD) style.
Today, 20 years after Covey's book was published, delegation is being taken for granted. Stewardship delegation, that is. Is it? Political correctness has taken its toll: nobody is called a gofer anymore (except maybe in companies that passed a brutal ISO 9000 audition), but de facto delegation has become sort of «I don't care how you get this done». If Covey was to write the book today, the section on Saying no was in for extensions.
Does Covey's thinking still sound reasonable to you? Let me know in a comment below.
To be continued…
Coming next: Stephen R. Coveys «The 7 Habits» (5/8): Think Win/Win. An overview of the series can be found here.
